DISCLAIMER: I don't own HP, blah blah blah ...
Amber Potter and the Traitor Within.
Blurb …
Follow the antics of 11-year-old cousins, Amber-Leigh Potter and Rosemary Weasley, during their first year at Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry, along with their new friend, Alice Longbottom.
Find out what happens when you mix an evil plot, an invisibility cloak and two girls with extraordinary powers and a world full of magic.
CHAPTER EIGHT: A Giant Visit.
The celebrations at winning the match lasted all day and well into the night. Slytherin's became increasingly sour towards all the Gryffindor's, sulking that they'd lost. Unfortunately, Slytherin's in a sour mood ended with tears and Gryffindor's in the hospital wing.
November turned to December, bringing bitter winds and one morning, the day before term ended, the castle woke to a blanket on soft snow. So Amber, Rosemary, Alice and all the other Gryffindor's found themselves trudging through the powdery flakes towards the greenhouses.
"Morning class!" Professor Sprout-a squat lady, with flyaway hair under a very dirty hat called that morning as the Gryffindor's hurried into the greenhouse, and out of the cold.
"Now today, we are pruning Chameleon bushes today-as you can see, who knows why it is called the Chameleon bush?" Professor Sprout called indicating a green bush, which seemed to be slightly squirming. No one put their hand up except for Geraldine Pewter.
"Um, I think I read it in a book-is it because it can blend in with its surroundings like a chameleon?" She asked, rather than said.
"Exactly Miss Pewter! 10 points to Gryffindor." Professor Sprout said. "Yes, the bush is likely to take the exact texture and colour of its current surroundings whenever it feels threatened or in-secure. Like so-"
Professor Sprout picked up a dragon-hide glove and threw it at the Chameleon bush. The bush gave a slight squeal and it disappeared from view-well, blended in with the greenhouse window which was swirling with snow behind it.
Everyone "Ooooo!" ed and moved forward for a better look. Amber, Rosemary and Alice stayed behind however and sat down at a table.
"What a start to the year!" Rosemary said, "Can you believe it's the last day of term?"
"Yeah, so much has happened." Alice agreed.
"Hey Amber, are we going home for Christmas?" Rosemary asked, as everyone started back towards their tables, each with a Chameleon bush.
"Uh … Rose, Daphne and Andy are from my family, but I'm staying." Amber replied, as Geraldine and Carley Conner came over with a bush for them "And I think you can either go or stay, depending on what you want to do."
"I'll stay; I won't leave you two all alone!" Rosemary said, smiling and Alice smiled at her gratefully.
"You know, how are you meant to prune this stupid thing, if it won't stay visible?" Alice said who had picked up her pruning clippers, to find the bush disappearing again.
Amber and Rosemary just laughed and ended up getting points taken for disrupting the class, instead of doing the work.
Term ended in high spirits. Many Gryffindor's were going home for Christmas, so that meant the Gryffindor tower was a lot more empty than usual. Amber, Rosemary and Alice could do anything they wanted without annoying anyone.
First years had an un-usual amount of homework-but nobody felt like working. All except for Alice spent the days up until Christmas laughing, eating lollies and playing wizard chess. Alice kept reminding them all to do their homework, but everyone was putting it off.
"We've got ages Alice!" Geraldine Pewter told her on Christmas Eve, as she, her friend Carley Conner and Amber and Rosemary lounged in front of the fire place, swapping chocolate frog cards.
"Ok … but don't say I didn't warn you!" Alice said, and returned to her essay on how to turn a feather into a piece of string.
Amber woke on Christmas day to Carley yelling "Presents!" and Amber opened her hangings to see Carley jumping on her bed, wearing new robes that were a light brown, which brought out the colour of her eyes, and everyone else awake and laughing at her.
"Morning all." Amber said sleepily, rubbing her eyes.
"Amber!" Rosemary said "You missed the show! Carley here decided to break out the karaoke, and sing for us-it was so funny that Deeny over there was crying and we thought Alice was going to stop breathing."
"Damn, I wish I had seen it." Amber said. She turned to her pile of presents at the bottom of her bed.
"Let's see what I have this year." Amber said, cracking her knuckles and digging into her gifts.
From Rosemary, she received a bracelet with "A R A-together till the end" written on it. Rosemary explained that the "A R A" stood for Amber Rosemary and Alice. Alice had received one too; along with the one Rosemary was wearing-Amber put it on right away.
Alice gave her a new quill and a batch of chocolate frogs, Carley and Geraldine gave a joint gift of a badge that said "My dad's famous! HA, beat that!" and another badge that said "Just because my other badge indicates that I've got a big head, doesn't mean that it's bigger than yours!" and a bunch of Weasley's wildfire wizzbangs.
"Hey-cool Amber!" Rosemary called, indicating her new scarf Amber knitted her.
"No problem! Aunt Hermione showed me how." Amber called back.
They spent the next few minutes, cooing over their new gifts, when Amber noticed Rosemary was wearing a new hand-knitted jumper. It was bright red and had a flower on it, and in blue, was the words "My little Rosemary". Amber scoffed and Rosemary turned.
"What?"
"What's with the jumper?" Amber asked "'My little Rosemary'?"
"My mum made it!" Rosemary said defensively. "She got the idea off Grandma. Besides-your mum's gotten you one two-mum said they were making them together. Everyone in our family has gotten one!"
Sure enough, When Amber bent down to open her last parcel, it contained a hand-knitted jumper, a strange golden-brown colour, with written in orange: "My dad's famous, so HA!" quite like the badge that Carley and Geraldine gave her.
Amber laughed, while Rosemary gave a little sound of dis-belief.
"Why does my mum have to give me the lame one?" Rosemary said, sounding outraged, as Alice laughed and Amber pulled on her own jumper.
Even though many students had gone home for Christmas, dinner was hardily less loud or "A rock concert would be quiet next to this!" according to Rosemary. Indeed she was right. Rose, Daphne and Andy might have gone home for Christmas, along with Rosemary's brother Joshua, but Zachary was staying, to help out as a new prefect. So the four sat at the Gryffindor table with Carley, Geraldine and a few other Gryffindor's from various year groups, making a great deal of noise, including bursting into song and calling out to members of other houses.
When the food came up as usual, Amber thought she actually saw Rosemary drool a bit and Alice tucked in straight away, getting a fright when Zachary and a forth year set off a wizard cracker, emitting a large bang and several wizard chess characters, which ended up hitting Filch on the head as he walked past.
"Hey! Tha' 'agrid, innin 'e?" Rosemary said through a mouthful of mash potatoes, pointing to a large man at least three times bigger than everyone else.
"Yeah … he is to." Amber said, looking over to where the bearded man sat next to Professor MacGonagall and about 5 times taller than Professor Flitwick on his other side, eating a large steak and talking merrily to Professor MacGonagall, whose voices carried over to them, so they could hear their entire conversation about inter-school unity.
"You know, we haven't visited Hagrid yet." Alice said, looking disgusted at Rosemary's full mouth "And isn't that on our L.O.T.W.N.T.D.I.M.O.O.P?"
"I think it is." Amber said.
"We shoo visit 'im." Rosemary said through some steak and kidney pie this time.
"Yeah, we should-tonight!" Amber said, as though it settled the matter.
"Cool. And I've told you hundreds of times-that's really quite disgusting, you know that, right?" Alice added to Rosemary, who had just sneezed, spraying Carley with bits of meet.
"Yup." Rosemary managed to say.
"Come on, this way."
Amber, Rosemary and Alice found themselves walking the corridors, streaked with red here and there, where windows were from the setting sun outside. They wore their cloaks as it had started to snow again by midday.
They made there way out the oak front doors and trudged a deep channel through the snow gently falling across the grounds, in the direction of Hagrid's cabin they had seen during their Herbology lessons.
Amber raised her hand and knocked on the door three times and they stood waiting in the snow, watching the light fade fast from over the forbidden forest.
There was a shuffling from inside the cabin, and then Hagrid's large face appeared in the doorframe. He opened the door a bit more when he saw who it was.
"Ah, hello! Yeh would be Harry's kids, righ'? And Ron, Hermione, and all the others. I've bin meaning to say hi to yeh, come in! Come in." Hagrid greeted them cheerfully and beckoned them inside.
Inside his cabin was one room, with a bed in one corner, a large fireplace in the other, and a huge table in the middle, which bore one bucket-sized mug and a plate of rock cakes.
"Don't take a rock cake-dad warned me about them." Rosemary whispered as they settled around the table and a large black boarhound bounded into the room, barking madly. He ran up to Rosemary who squealed, but Alice laughed as the dog licked Rosemary's face.
"This here's Fang." Hagrid said, sitting down himself. "He's a big softie-wouldn' hurt a fly."
"Good to know." Rosemary said in disgust as Fang started to drool all over her cloak.
"So how's yeh first year at Hogwarts bin so far?" Hagrid asked, offering rock cakes to each of them. Amber took one hastily and Rosemary and Alice quickly followed suit.
"Well, I think it's been pretty good." Alice said, "Well, I suppose there's these two who won't do their homework and Miss-my-dad's-famous-so-ha over here has had nothing but attention since we got here, but hey-that's life at Hogwarts."
Hagrid chuckled as Amber pulled a face at Alice and Rosemary was now edging away from Fang.
"Not so much attention-more like nothing but detention." Amber corrested her, and they all laughed.
"Ar, you lot remind me so much of Harry, Ron and Hermione. They loved to visit me when they were here. We had so much fun-"
He broke off. Amber heard it too. There was voices coming from outside. One male, the other female. Heading away-towards the forest.
A/N: Dun dun duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun! Who could it be? I bet you can guess. All well. Hurrah. Hope you like this chapter. God, it's not a very interesting story, is it? All well.
Running gag-Alice being disgusted at Amber and Rosemary's table manners (Or lack there-of). Lol.
Anywho, huge huge thankyou's to Fizzing-Whizbee-nz, Ginny278, Morgaine00000016, and exspecialy I Shot The Sheriff-thanks for all your help, and everyone's kind words.
See you next time ... Moon :D